


sitting soft in this purest snow; fell in love with the fire long ago

by eldritch_beau



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Essek caught the feelies and so did Caleb, M/M, and they yearn, but is now a 7k fic, canon events but make it: Shadowgast have history, into what was supposed to be only a drabble, its the childhood sweethearts AU no one @ me, the dex i rolled to have Essek NEVER call Caleb 'bren' has GOt to be a nat 20, watch how I incorporate angst and fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritch_beau/pseuds/eldritch_beau
Summary: AU where the time when Caleb meets Essek in the court of the Bright Queen was NOT the first time they met each other.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 43
Kudos: 472





	sitting soft in this purest snow; fell in love with the fire long ago

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was born out of my sole need to make the pun that "chath" which stands for "fire" in Undercommon sounds almost identical to "schatz" which is Zemnian for "sweetheart".
> 
> (psst.. in this AU we let drow and humans have similar life-expectancy _just because._ )
> 
> * * *

The first time Essek met Caleb was when they were both too young to understand what meeting someone who you will love for the rest of your life means.

At 12 years old, Essek hardly knew anything at all. His father was a vagabond of a man who had _just_ enough money to disappear for weeks on end after buying a good house just outside of the Zemni Fields; and to send his son to the Soltryce Academy, the most acclaimed school for gifted minds on this side of the border. And Essek _was._ A gifted mind, that is. Bright and smart and incredibly competitive, perhaps a little _too_ competitive with this other child in class who was equally smart and equally clever and who looked at Essek with a fire in his eyes to match the fire in his hair.

Essek never had any reason to learn the boy’s name. Perhaps he was too shy, or too bitter. He had seen the boy challenge him in class, argue on the finer points of magic as _any_ twelve year old can... but the boy was well-informed, well-read. Essek wanted to hate him, wanted to fight with this boy who was always beating him to the right answer by a fraction of a second if Essek got distracted by the freckles on his cheeks or how his hair would fall over his eyes. The boy had kindness in him—Essek knows this because he has watched the boy share his meagre lunch with the cats that wander into campus. The boy’s clothes were always a little loose, like he was yet to grow into them and his hands coarse— Essek had brushed his hand once when the boy had broken his pencil and Essek had wordlessly handed over his own—he would hate to see his _competition_ fall behind, that was all, nothing else, it wasn’t kindness. It was just... making sure this boy continued to challenge Essek. Being challenged is how Essek grew. It’s what made him stronger, the _only_ thing that made him stronger (besides his father’s continued absence from his life— or so, he told himself).

He doesn’t remember the boy’s name, perhaps because the boy never gave it to him. Or perhaps because he knows the boy better now, and by a different name. But back then, in his head he had started to call the boy _Cha’th._ Fire. For the red in his hair. And when he let that slip, in his very first conversation with the boy, his reaction is one that Essek still struggles to decipher.

“Cha’th… as in Zemnian… _schatz_ ?” the boy’s cheeks were reddening and Essek felt himself smile, the familiar feeling of joy because maybe this boy _didn’t_ know the right answer to everything after all.

“Chath as in Undercommon for ‘fire’.” Essek said with perhaps a little too much vigor, “For your hair! It is very… very fiery” and just like that, his moment of victory had slipped and he got the distinct feeling like he had said a little too much, “...what does _schatz_ in Zemnian mean anyway?”

(Essek didn’t know then. But he knows _now._ )

“No, nothing, nothing at all!” the boy had smirked, like he found it amusing. And he probably did, for then he said, “hmm, then I will call you... _schneewittchen._ ” and he looked so proud of himself, so smug—

“Schneewittchen?” Essek had been suspicious, “is that something _...bad_ in Zemnian?”

“No, silly!” the boy laughed, a quiet but wholehearted laugh, “it means snow white. For _your_ hair. Now we have matching nicknames. Friends do that.”

 _Friends._ Essek had never had a friend before.

So when the boy insisted that Essek call him ‘chath’ _all_ the time (“all the time,” the fire-haired boy repeated, persistent right then as he was with the teachers when he was _sure_ he was right), all Essek could think about was that this boy had called Essek his friend, and if his _friend_ insisted that he call him ‘chath’.... who was Essek to argue with that.

“Schneewittchen!” the boy waved his hand over, beckoning him... and Essek, young as he was, gravitated to Caleb then as he does even _now_.

And thinking back on it, Essek remembers wondering if Caleb really thought his hair was as pretty as snow? It’s hard to stay angry or suspicious when he smiles at Essek like that. Besides, they were walking back home on the same road and who would have guessed, they both liked magic, they both liked learning, they both liked books and turns out they didn’t dislike each other at all—quite the opposite actually. They seemed to like each other… _very_ much. When they parted ways on their way home, the boy smiled and told Essek he’d save a seat for him in class the next day, and that he hoped _Schneewittchen_ wouldn’t think that he would go easy on him now that they knew more about each other than just the rivalry they had nursed for the last few months. Essek told him he _would like to see him try_ and the boy smirked, challenging yet friendly and said goodbye and it was as he walked back to his own house, it suddenly hit Essek that… perhaps he had made his _very_ first friend.

Essek doesn’t remember a lot from that part of his childhood, his relationship with his father was fraught with peril and it hurts to think about it even now. But he remembers admiring Caleb’s scratchy handwriting, fast and legible to only those who knew what they are reading. Caleb’s mind always raced ahead of his hand’s ability to keep up with his thoughts. And it was just another of those things that endeared Essek to him. Two weeks into their friendship, Essek had just mustered up the courage to invite his friend to his house, where his father was so infrequent that he might as well just be a tourist. The house where Essek wanted his _friend_ around, if only to quieten the yawning emptiness of his life spent away in this drudged house too loud in its silence.

By two months into their friendship, the boys spent almost all their time in either Caleb’s house or Essek’s, secretly liking how their nicknames sounded when the other said it, finding obscure books and playing pretend about what they would keep in their respective wizard towers when they grow up, what kind of magic they would learn and teach—and Caleb made Essek promise that wherever they make their wizard towers, it would be next to each other’s.

“Or maybe we could ...share one.” Essek had suggested, shrugging to make it sound nonchalant.

But the way Caleb’s eyes lit up at that possibility and the vigorous way he nodded and said, “Yes! Of course, Schneewittchen! We could have a tower together and it would have all the cats and all the books! And we would have each other and what else could we need?”

 _Nothing_ , Essek almost said, feeling a weird thump in his heart at the sight of Caleb’s eagerness, his bright-eyed excitement. Nothing quite fills up his father’s big empty mansion the way Caleb’s presence does. Nothing quite fills Essek’s heart like the fire-haired boy’s smile.

Two years into their friendship and on Caleb’s fourteenth birthday, Essek kissed him.

He didn’t intend to and he certainly wasn’t planning to but the fire-haired boy had already unwrapped his present and he had _loved_ the journal Essek got him so much and he ran his fingers over the velvety cover repeatedly saying _how much_ he loved it and he held it so close to his chest… and Essek, who had spent the last couple of months scouting over shops and apothecaries for the perfect gift— for him to see Caleb’s eyes light up was so much worth it all that trouble (and more) that Essek couldn’t help it. He reached forward and planted a gentle kiss on Caleb’s left cheek, right atop that freckle that was his favourite and before he knew it, his face was in Caleb’s warm hands and Caleb kissed him too, like it was second nature to him and he left the kiss on his right cheek where Essek was blushing purple now ...but it wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t bad at all and Essek knew he was leaning in even if he was stupefied; and he knew in that moment Caleb held his very heart in his hands and when they pulled away, he wouldn’t know what to say. He wouldn’t know how to go back to pretending that he didn’t want to kiss his best friend more, like he hasn’t been wanting to kiss him for at least the better part of the past year.

But Caleb only smiled shyly, looking away with his face reddened and said, “Thank you… _schneewittchen_ ” and there was that nickname again and Essek’s heart had picked up an ungodly pace so Essek just nodded because what else could he do but stare at Caleb, whose smile was so bright it could split the sun. And Essek’s heart with it.

Perhaps Essek should have guessed then, when things are going too good that it’s an omen—that things will go bad very soon. He should have known, he thinks now in retrospect. But there was no way he could have known _then._ His last fight with his father for never really being around, for not being worthy of his son’s respect… had seemed to hit a nerve for his father was gone the next day again. And while that was usual, to be alone in that big house that only felt like a home when Caleb was around… it felt like something irreparable had happened. Even when they were sitting and talking, or reading or Essek was running his hand through his _best friend_ ’s (imagine that!) hair… the nagging feeling of guilt never left him. And Caleb, with his sharp eyes and kind smile… he could tell something was wrong.

So he asked, and when Essek couldn’t explain with words, he only hugged Essek tighter. And it made Essek almost believe that perhaps loving won’t always have to hurt (like loving his father hurt). Because _this_ doesn’t hurt. Loving Caleb does not hurt at all. _Not yet,_ a voice would whisper and Essek would cling tighter to the boy with freckles on his cheek and whose touch warmed this empty feeling in his bones on even in the coldest of days.

But he was _right_ ; Essek was right and that was perhaps the first time he _hated_ being right.

The scroll from Roshona arrived only a month after his father had left for Bazoxxan and this scroll had Den Thelyss’ esteemed seal on it. Essek didn’t open it. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what it said but he knew the message it carried would be something that would be too big for him to face, and it only made him feel smaller in comparison. So he left it in the big library and ran. He ran to Caleb’s house, panting and breathless and scared. He remembers being so damn scared.

It was on his way that he ran into Caleb himself. And in his hand, Caleb also had a very-important looking scroll of his own.

“Schneewittchen!” Caleb called out, concern getting more pronounced on his face, the closer he got, “Where are you going! What’s wrong?”

 _Run away with me_ , Essek had intended to say _, I feel like this world is about to come crashing down and I can’t breathe, I can’t do this without you. Run away with me._ But as he looked at his best friend, who had an agonizing mix of joy and grief in his eyes, he put this yawning need aside and gestured with his chin at the scroll in Caleb’s hand and asked instead, “What is that?”

“A letter.” His friend said, voice a curious mixture of… something, “from the Cerberus Assembly… they… they want me to join their elite programme.”

Essek swallowed. Forcefully shoved down the pain that was threatening to break him apart from the inside. “Well, you always were an elite student.” And he smiled at his friend. Smiled because his friend deserved this. He knew how much Caleb has always wanted to reach higher academia, and the Cerberus Assembly was the highest of them all in the Empire. This was the zenith of prestige. For Caleb. For his parents. For Essek too, because he wanted Caleb to succeed in life.

He loved Caleb. He _loves_ Caleb.

Had he ever told him that?

“It’s in Rexxentrum.” Caleb said, like he was letting the ball drop ….and it hung in the air between them. 

He’s _leaving._

“When?” was all Essek could ask and even now he remembers how frightfully breakable he sounded, how frightfully _small_ he felt.

“First thing tomorrow morning.” Caleb said, cupping the back of his neck with his palm. And Essek stared as _his_ _chath,_ his Caleb… his _friend_ sounded so ashamed about it, like he was admitting to some crime for having to leave Essek behind. And Essek never wanted that. He never wanted his best friend to feel ashamed for wanting _more._ If anything, Essek understood.

“And you’re going …alone?”

“No, I… uh,” the boy rubbed the back of his neck, a bit uncomfortable, “…you remember Astrid? And Eodwulf? from class? Master Ikithon said they were also coming along.”

“Your parents must be very proud of you.” Essek had said, taking the fidgeting boy’s hand and then hugging him full, an indulgence he would allow himself just this once. If only it’s the last memory he gets to savour of his… _friend_ . Essek barely holds himself back and says, “I am ...proud of you too.” he has to hold himself together, can’t break can’t break can’t— “You will be amazing… _schatz._ ”

“d-danke..., schneewittchen.” And somehow, even though Caleb smiled, his voice sounded fragile too, maybe just a little bit and Essek indulged himself that those tears were for him, that his friend would miss him perhaps almost as much… and he didn’t want to hold his friend back. He would never do that.

So when Caleb asked why Essek was running to him, Essek lied. He lied and said it wasn’t important and if Caleb could tell he was lying (and he knew Caleb _could_ )… Caleb didn’t press on. He just looked at Essek like he was holding his breath, waiting for Essek to say… _something._

“I will ...miss you.” Essek had said instead.

Caleb shook his head, like that wasn’t what he wanted to hear (what did he want to hear, then?) and he responded, in a half-hearted voice, “I’ll write to you every day. And I will visit too. As often as I can.” It was meant to reassure but… but it didn’t reach Essek, the chasm that had opened between them felt too wide to carry such promises made to the wind. So Essek just kissed his friend on the cheek, one last time, before turning back the way he came.

All alone in his lonely house, where his footsteps echo probably a little too loud, Essek opened the scroll that he had left sitting on the expensive library table. The message was written in High Undercommon, in the fine hand of the noble-blood of Xhorhas.

 _Your father is deceased_ , the letter told him, _fallen in Bazoxxan; and your mother implores you to travel back to Rosohna. Come home and be properly initiated into Den Thelyss. Lady Dierta, the Umavi deins to grace you with her proper guidance to assist you in your anamnesis. It is time,_ she said, _I’ve let your father prance about with you enough. Come back to Rosohna and accept the mantle that has always been yours._

 _Or else_. She didn’t say but it was implied all the same.

Essek slumped against the wall and before he knew it, he was on the ground, curled up into himself in this corner of the library of this big (too big) house. Grieving. Grieving what exactly? His dead father? His liminal childhood? Going back to Roshona and submitting to a life he has always felt trapped in? Or the fact that he would probably never see the person again who had made this brief piece of forever somehow worth it?

He doesn’t know.

All he knows is that he has never in his life felt _so alone._

—

His anamnesis never happened. He would see the disappointment in his mother’s eyes and everyone else’s, that veiled look of disdain even when they smiled at him. Tight-lipped and scornful. None of their smiles held the warmth of that childhood friend he had lost, whose face he can’t exactly remember properly, save for that brilliant shade of his hair. In contrast, the dismay of his elders and peers was palpable when even with the Umavi’s guidance, Essek couldn’t locate any memories from his past life. When they all realized that he simply _didn’t_ have wisdom far beyond his years (unlike his peers). Essek was just an empty soul, in his first life. Learning everything from scratch. 

Young in all the wrong ways.

Perhaps that was why he was so _eager_ to please. Why he felt the need to carve himself out of every tradition and custom that Den Thelyss upheld. Why he threw himself into the study of dunamancy out of interest and as an escape and why he invented a graviturgist spell to keep himself afloat, to distinguish his station and his position and his power… even though he’s come to hate the whole lot of it now. He is compulsively tied to the performance of it, to the obligations that come with being the Shadowhand to the Dynasty, a prodigy and the youngest person in the Court of the Bright Queen. He is older now. More than twenty years have passed since he moved to Roshona with naught but a determination to make something of himself in this cruel, cruel world.

Of course, no letter ever came from the other side of the border. And Essek didn’t write to the Cerberus Assembly either, didn’t ask for his friend. He left the Zemni Fields not two days after Caleb’s departure and in odd moments of indulgence he finds himself wondering if Caleb had ever shown up to that empty mansion and found Essek gone. _Fuck that big house,_ Essek would think to himself, bitterness laced in every memory as he sat in his even bigger house with three towers that felt thrice as empty. This was the new norm but he didn’t have to like it. He simply had to obey. His duties pushed his need for companionship to a place where he couldn’t begin to reach, not without opening the door to a kind of pain that he’d rather stayed closed.

Maybe that's why it didn’t click at first. Maybe that’s why when a human stepped forward from a ragtag group of chaotic individuals, claiming to have deflected from the Empire and presented the beacon to the Bright Queen, Essek was only unnaturally intrigued. Maybe that was why when the Bright Queen gave their charge over to him and he found himself arranging for a house for them it didn’t seem out of sorts. It was all fine, until the human, the wizard of that group looked straight into Essek’s eyes and asked to be taught dunamancy. And then suddenly Essek was drowning.

The blue of his eyes was such a shocking shade of familiarity that for a whole second (or was it a minute?) Essek forgot to breathe. Even if there was some inexplicable sadness that lined this wizard’s face that Essek doesn’t remember from the time he had last seen him ...all those years ago. No, he called himself Caleb Widogast now. And it’s the name Essek prefers anyway, now that he knows _why._ But Essek could vaguely recall a boy with a different name, those same blue eyes. The same fire in his hair. Cha’th. _Schatz._

He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected— when he agreed to teach Caleb dunamancy. How one lesson snowballed to many and it felt… it felt right. To feel like he knew Caleb. That he had known Caleb before too. And maybe it felt like knowing _too much_ because it didn’t seem like Caleb knew him _at all._ Didn’t recognize him in the least, no. 

Maybe it was for the best.

And Essek _tried_ to look away, not when he saw Caleb pull out his spell-books but when he pulled out a notebook, a journal that looked worn out and weary but had that familiar red velvety cover. The journal looked perhaps a bit dirty, torn... and well-travelled but Essek’s eyes followed that notebook as Caleb put it aside and turned to face Essek with parchment and quill in his hand. And Essek had to even his breathing, meet Caleb’s eyes like his pulse wasn’t pounding in his ears, because he could swear, he could swear that it was the same journal _he_ had hunted stores and apothecaries for... that it was the same journal he had given his friend so many years ago.

“ _Ja_ , I’m ready when you are.” Caleb says, sparing Essek a curious, measuring look and Essek is brilliant under scrutiny, he has taught himself these skills to survive so he plasters on a mask of confidence, a formality of a smile.

“Very well, then.”

But there are cracks starting to form in his composure Essek isn’t sure he wants Caleb to see.

—

But Caleb shows up a lot, asking for him. Asking for his help. In a way that feels personal, like a favour. Given, more than taken. And Essek, he enjoys having Caleb around too much to complain. The people Caleb surrounds himself with care about him, this much Essek knows. And if this is his friend from all those years ago, then it’s good. It’s good that his friend has found people who love him. That his friend has found friends. Why should it hurt that Essek hasn’t found any? Why should it hurt that Essek _wishes_ Caleb’s friends… were his friends too?

It was a stalemate and it was _all fine._ All fine because it didn’t matter that Essek recognized Caleb from a childhood friendship (and more) that never came to be. It didn’t matter until the Empire scourger they had captured made a move on Caleb that could have been instantly fatal and Essek reacted out of _pure instinct._ Never mind that the captured scourger was slated for a court execution or that Essek might even get reprimanded by the Queen herself for this— but before he knew it, Essek was levitating the scourger, holding her aloft, a cold wrath in his veins as he turned to Caleb. _Waiting._ Trying not to look at the blood pooling at Caleb’s neck and soaking through his collar and jacket. Trying not to think about how Essek had not thought to check the scourger first and had endangered Caleb’s life in that process. How the blood that splotched the human’s scarf a dark red was on Essek’s hands too, for not being as careful as he should have been. When Caleb finally gave him the signal, the act of executing her should not have been as justified as it felt. But it did.

And ever since, _nothing_ has been the same.

Caleb found him that evening, with something of a determination brimming in those remarkable blue eyes of his. He looked tense, as if what he had come to find Essek for took a great deal of his strength. And as he got closer, that tension was beginning to bleed into Essek as well.

“Ah, Essek,” Caleb gave a swift nod, eyes flitting across Essek’s face, “I wanted to thank you for… looking out for me today.”

“There’s no need to thank me, Widogast.”

“There is, I—” Caleb gestured with his chin towards the way that leads out of the Lucid Bastion, “I uh, if you would… walk with me, please.”

“And your friends?” Essek could see no sign of them.

“I sent them home. I…” Caleb paused and Essek’s eyes were drawn to the still drying blood on the lapel of Caleb’s coat. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Careful enough to school his face, Essek smiled. “By all means.”

—

The walk would have been short if Caleb hadn’t pulled Essek aside at a secluded corner of the Bastion and turned to face him with an indecipherable expression on his face.

“I have been… thinking about this for a long while, _ja_ and... and I _know_ ...I know I have no right to ask this of you but I… I have to know,” Caleb fixes Essek with a piercing look in his eyes, “ _Why._ ”

Essek tilts his head slightly to the left, confused, “why what?” he asks but his voice is not as strong as he would like.

Caleb’s grimace, tinted with the grief that lines his shoulder his spine, his whole waking being— it twists something inside Essek as Caleb pushes his hair back from his forehead with a rough hand and says, “Why did you leave Zemni Fields without telling me?”

“Caleb, I do not—”

“You _did._ ” And Caleb looks wretched now, breathing sharply through his nose and, “You are not one who is easily forgotten, Essek. least of all by me. Perhaps it is silly of me, to hold you to my oldest grievance but I, I feel like I got so many answers tonight but there’s still _one_ I want to know… Why did you leave Zemni Fields... without telling me? I thought we were close enough friends to tell each other that much but… perhaps I was wrong…” a wry smile curves along his face, “was I?”

“No!” the sharpness in Essek’s voice cuts through the air between them. The fact that Caleb would even consider something so ridiculo— 

“Then _why?_ ” Caleb presses on, “When I came back for the summer, your house had been sold to some other rich family and you weren’t there. Nobody knew where you had gone, just that you’d… disappeared and I had no idea how to find you, you never wrote to me. Seems silly, maybe; but I… I suppose I needed you then. And I looked everywhere for you, I...“ Caleb shakes his head, “I missed my best friend, Essek. You’re here _now_ and I know… I _know_ you know me, but you talk to me as if I’m a stranger. I just… Essek, I… I need to know. Was I always… irredeemable? Did you know even back then that I was the worst of the worst to walk this earth? Is there truly no hope for me, then?”

Essek imagines this must be what being gut-punched within an inch of his life must feel like.

“Because I don’t understand, Essek.” Caleb continues on, a fury brimming in those eyes, “You pretend not to recognize me and I go along with it, perhaps to save you some embarrassment but then suddenly you’re defying orders and executing scourgers for barely scratching me (“it was more than a scratch and you know it” Essek tries to interrupt but Caleb wills on) and I don’t want to read into this, I don’t— but then you look at me like—”

“like what?” his own voice sounds so raw, like the world around him has quietened down to the periphery of just Caleb.

And Caleb’s voice is barely above a whisper, almost lost to the faint breeze of the evening Roshona air, “...don’t make me say it.”

The silence stretches for a moment too long and too tense before Essek breaks it.

“My father died.“ Essek starts, still at a loss about how to phrase it, “He _perished_ on that expedition to Baxxozan. I don’t know if you remember (“I do”, Caleb’s features soften). Den Thelyss— Dierta, my _mother,_ wrote to me about it and implored that I return to Roshona if I want to make anything of myself and so, I…” Essek shrugs, “...came back here. I had nothing left for me there, not after you were gone.”

“Oh. I am sorry about your ...father.” Caleb reaches a hand and rests it on Essek’s forearm, ever so lightly, “I know you had… a difficult relationship with him. I am sorry for your loss.”

“It was a long time ago, Caleb.” Essek lets his eyes run over the wizard’s features, eyes lingering on the patches of freckles on his cheek, that particularly dark one that used to be his favourite, “A lot has happened since then.”

“I am sorry, nevertheless.” Caleb insists, pulling away from Essek and the absence of Caleb’s warmth is startling, “I… I should not have… pressured you into a confrontation. It wa—”

“No, I’m glad you did.” Essek interrupts, feeling a shift in the air between them. The weight of all that’s unsaid not exactly lifted, but perhaps a bit reduced. So Essek continues, “I don’t like pretending not to know you. To be quite frank, I simply assumed that _you_ didn’t remember me. Now that you have found yourself good friends, Caleb… you don’t exactly need _me._ ” Essek tries to smile but it feels forced.

There’s a hesitancy before Caleb speaks again, almost like it takes a lot of his strength to be brave when he says, “I will _always_ need my oldest friend.” and smiles that smile that always split Essek’s heart in two, “...if he’ll have me.”

Essek fears if he tries to speak, he will only choke on everything he had almost said to Caleb, all those years ago. So instead he gives a soft nod. And he is brave enough to hold Caleb’s gaze too, if only to let the wizard see how _much_ he means it. 

—

He does teach Caleb two more spells before they are to go on the mission to retrieve yet another beacon. 

He hopes it will be enough.

—

They have been gone for too long now and Essek _almost_ does the unthinkable and sends a message to Jester, for news. Any news that they are okay, that they are _alive._ But there’s Allura Vysoren now, a powerful archmage from the Tal’Dorei Council who barges into the Lucid Bastion, vouching for the Nein and Essek is _proud_ of Den Nein, he makes their case in front of the Bright Queen alongside this woman he has only heard of from distant tales of glory. He is relieved when the Bright Queen relents.

But there’s that feeling again, that while the Nein are well on their mission to retrieve the other beacon, they are _home._ In the Empire. He tries to ignore this itch on the inside of his skull that tells him that he has been replaced.

And Essek has no right to worry for them, but he _does_. And more than most, he worries for Caleb.

—

But when the Nein return, they bear the promise of peace. A shaky truce, but a _chance,_ nonetheless— and Essek has never been prouder. Perhaps, he stares a little too long at Caleb. And ignores the heat in his cheeks when Caleb stops mid-sentence to say “hello” to him.

That night, he juggles the possibility of accepting their invitation to dinner. He isn’t sure they meant it, but… he pulls the best wine he can and he is out of the door before he can change his mind.

—

This time when they leave him it’s at the behest of a freeing their friend from a curse. When they are gone, when the noise of their conversations have departed into the street below, Essek wonders long and hard on how for the first time in… what feels like forever, his house felt a little bit like home.

—

The next time they are practicing magic together, it’s at Essek’s tower, where words come easier and smiles come easier still. 

Caleb came to his house alone this time and it’s the first time they’ve been in each other’s company without someone else just _happening_ to be there as well. (Ever since Essek accepted their invitation to dinner, the Nein have been more giving in their friendship. So much so that they tend to be almost everywhere at all times.) Not to mention Essek’s nagging fear that Beau _knows_ about his feelings for Caleb, that she is purposefully holding that card close to her chest to bombard Essek with at only the most opportune moment.

But Beau is not here tonight. And neither is Jester. Or Nott. It’s just him and Caleb. And they are still getting used to this, rediscovering each other through older eyes now, holding each other through a new lens of appraisal, a trust that is built of pillars rediscovered and reestablished through stolen glances and nods. And shared curiosity..

So, perhaps that is what Essek was caught up in when he noticed Caleb unhook his journal from his book holsters and put it aside before opening his spell-books.

“I can’t believe you still kept it.” Essek gives his head a tiny shake as he gestures towards Caleb’s journal with one hand and draws an incantation for pulling his own spell-books from a pocket-dimension with the other.

“Of course I kept it,” Caleb’s voice sounds a bit constricted and Essek turns to face him in full, “a very important friend gave it to me, _ja._ And it’s seen me through some very...difficult times.”

The way Caleb looks, head bent slightly lower, eyes focused but unseeing, it suddenly reminds Essek of something Caleb had said the other day.

“I am sorry I didn’t write to you,” he says, “I should have… I should have been there when you needed me.”

Caleb gives his head a gentle shake in response, glancing at Essek through the corner of his eyes before going back to avoiding his gaze.

“When we saw each other last,” Caleb speaks, holding himself very still, “ on that midway path between my house and yours… did you know then? That you were going to…leave?”

Revisiting old wounds it is, then.

“I had received a letter from Den Thelyss but I hadn’t opened it.”

“So you knew?”

“I feared.”

Caleb doesn’t say anything. The silence that stretches from that moment feels too heavy on their fragile friendship and Essek leaps forward to mend it any way he can.

“I was afraid, I think. I intended to write to you when I first got here,” he says, kneeling in front of Caleb so Essek has to tilt his head slightly for them to be almost eye to eye, “but I failed my anamnesis, the entire reason Den Thelyss had wanted me was in the hopes that child prodigy as I already was, I would remember my past lives as some brilliant figure, some consecuted genius who had died— and I would bring them glory and prosperity. They weren’t happy to learn that I was just a new soul, in my first life. I had failed them— and by the default of my birth, I had failed my mother the most. I suppose its a shame I carry with me. A shame that has propelled me into the study of dunamancy the way it has, a shame that pushed me to strive towards the position of the Shadowhand when I don’t even— I don’t know.” Essek closes his eyes, breathing shallow, “It’s the same shame that prevented me from writing to you, Caleb. There you were in the Cerberus Assembly, rising to positions of your own merit. And here I was, on the other side of the border, failing my family, my den and myself in all the worst ways possible. I suppose in some part, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be your friend. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also because I was afraid that you had already forgotten me.”

Essek doesn’t open his eyes; he lets the darkness of his vision feel like time is standing still in all the ways dunamancy has yet to discover. But there’s the warmth of touch, of a calloused palm cupping the side of his face and his heart picks up an erratic pace; a thumb brushes gently over his cheekbone as the fingertips rest against his jaw and right below his ear where his neck meets his hairline.

Essek opens his eyes, tentatively, to a clear blue gaze, sorrow and longing lining along it’s fraying edges. It makes Essek almost hope again, dangerous as it is.

“I should have run away with you when you asked.” Caleb says, voice soft and gentle and sure. He sounds _so sure._

“But I didn’t ask.” is all Essek could say, staring back into the stormy ocean of Caleb’s eyes. He specifically remembers _not asking,_ despite how tempting it had been.

“You _did_ , I could see it in your eyes— you almost, you—” Caleb sounds breathless, “why didn’t you say it with your words, Essek?”

 _I was afraid you’d say no._ But that’s not the whole truth of it. “We were young.” he says, “Besides, I didn’t— I didn’t want to steal your future from you.”

Caleb breathes out shakily, his thumb grazing over Essek’s cheekbone, soft and slow like he’s memorizing this moment in time, like he’s memorizing Essek for all the time they have spent apart. “I wish you did,” he says, a smile twisting his features into the saddest of expressions, “I wish you had asked.”

He lets his hand drop like dead weight but Essek catches it. Gently, he cradles Caleb’s hand between his own, feeling the rough fabric of the bandages that separate them. When Caleb doesn’t pull away, only lower his gaze enough to rest on his own forearms, Essek tilts his own head just a little bit closer.

“Caleb... what happened?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

For a solid minute Caleb doesn’t speak and Essek can sense Caleb’s distress. From what Caleb had told him about himself when the scourger had first been caught, Essek knew Caleb had a shared history there. And from what he has gleaned from Caleb’s conversation with the scourger, he had heard enough to know that whatever was lurking there was nothing short of an unbearable kind of pain. But he has never pushed Caleb to talk about it and even now it feels like he might be toeing the line.

Caleb gently untangles his hand from Essek’s grip and Essek pulls away too apologizing profusely when Caleb just shakes his head. 

And slowly as Caleb starts to undo the bandages on his arms, he tells Essek _everything._ From the moment he first stepped foot in the grandeur of the Assembly to this breathless, panting escape from the Vergassen Sanatorium and everything in between. He tells Essek about Astrid and Eodwulf, about the friendships he made and hollow places he searched for love and companionship. He tells Essek about Trent Ikithon, the man whom he had trusted and the man who had lied to him about everything he knew. The man who made him kill his parents. The man who imprisoned him and kept him catatonic for eleven years. The man who did _this_ to him, he said as he presented both his arms, shaky and unsure and Essek laid his eyes upon the dozens of criss-crossing lines that ran along his skin, spanning the entire expanse of his forearm— the least of his scars.

(“may I?” Essek asked gently, taking Caleb’s hands in his own only when Caleb nodded.)

Caleb closed his eyes again, unable to look at Essek as he took a deep breath and pulling at some strength that Essek’s reassuring touch gave him, Caleb continued.

And then he told Essek about his parents. How he had burned it all down, how when he woke up all he knew was the deep feeling like ash in his mouth. How he doesn’t remember much from then on, how eleven years worth of memories escape him. How a woman freed him, a woman who herself might have been mad, or simply died because she helped him. How he made his own escape and killed a man for it.

“And this,” he says, pulling at the chain from around his neck and holding up the locket, “this is why they haven’t found me yet. But everything I have done… I am drowned in sin, Essek. I took this new name to keep myself hidden but also because I couldn’t bear to be the person I was when I was...” he flinches, “when I was _Bren._ I have made mistakes that cannot be fixed, sins that cannot be outrun, people I have lost that I… I had begun to think of the past as only a reminder of wretchedness. But then I saw _you_ and I… I remember you. I remember the person I was when I was with you, and I remember the way you made me feel… I liked who I was when I was with you. And I… almost like who I am when I am with the Nein. I want to believe I am not lost. I want to believe there’s more I can do. I see you and I am reminded that perhaps there is one thing that I did not do wrong. That perhaps my friends are always the best of me.”

And even then, he avoids Essek’s gaze. Holds himself stiff and unsure, almost like he’s expecting Essek to pull away, to condemn him with _everything_ that he has already condemned himself. Like he’s baring an exposed nerve in the hope that it will be struck, that there will be some external pain to match the one that is raging inside him. There is something so vulnerable in the hunched curve of his shoulders that Essek surges forward and pulls Caleb into his arms, like they were both suddenly thirteen year olds again.

“Caleb, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me” he says into Caleb's hair.

“You know, in moments of selfishness, I…” Caleb says, voice tingling at Essek’s neck, “I _wish._ I wish I had run away with you.”

“I wish I had asked.” Essek's voice almost breaks but now more than _anything_ he means it.

It’s easier to stay that way when Caleb’s shoulders relax and his arms come round to hold Essek as well. It’s a different hug from the one the last hug they shared in this tower. Somehow this feels more… intimate. There’s a silence that stretches between them, but this one is more comfortable… like a shared space.

“I’m glad our paths crossed again.” Caleb says, “It’s good to have you back, _schneewittchen._ ” his voice is a little indulgent, even as he is the one to break the silence.

“You too, cha’th.” the old nickname comes so easy and Caleb muffles his laugh in Essek’s neck. Even as Caleb is taller than him now (which is outrageous, by the way), he rests his forehead against the slope of Essek’s shoulder and,

“You know… I never told you this but cha’th sounds like .. _scha_ —”

“I know” Essek sighs.

“It’s the Zemnian for—”

“I _know,_ Caleb.”

That makes Caleb pull back, just enough to look at Essek.

“What do you mean you _know?_ ” he asks, sounding a little offended as his cheeks redden, “did you know when we were kids?”

“Well, I didn’t know when you asked me to call you that, but… I figured out soon enough.”

“How soon?”

“Well… two days, maybe three.”

“And you still… continued to call me that?”

“I did.” Essek says. He makes it a point to hold Caleb’s gaze when he adds, “More often than not, I liked calling you the Zemnian _schatz_.”

Caleb just stares at him.

“Would you like me to stop?” Essek asks, after a beat.

“No!” Caleb protests, and he doesn’t break away or flinch when he adds after a breath, “...but would you still call me that? If I… if I asked?”

“As long as you’d like, _yes._ ”

Caleb’s eyes soften and he pulls Essek closer, resting his forehead against Essek’s collar before pulling his nose slowly up the length of Essek’s neck, nudging the drow’s ear with the tip of his nose. Essek can’t suppress the shiver that runs down his spine.

“I would like, _ja_.” he says, smiling into the kiss he plants at the edge of Essek’s ear, “I would like it very much.”

—


End file.
